On the second day of our journey the people on board celebrated a church feast, and the pilot, in his anxiety to do it well, got helplessly drunk. The result was that during that night I was thrown out of the top berth I occupied by a terrific thud. The steamer had run on the sandbank of an uninhabited island, and there she stuck fast--immovable. We were landed on the shore, and there had further time for reflection on the mutability of things. In the white sand there were distinct footprints of a large jaguar and cub, probably come to prey on the lazy alligators that were lying on the beach; and I caught sight of a large spotted serpent, which glided into the low jungle where the tiger also doubtless was in hiding. After three days' detention here, a Brazilian packet took us off. On stepping aboard, I saw what I thought to be two black pigs lying on the deck. I assure the reader that it was some seconds before I discovered that one was not a pig, but a man! At sunset it is the custom on these river boats for all to have a bath. The females go to one side of the ship, and the males to the other; buckets are lowered, and in turn they throw water over each other. After supper, in the stillness of the evening, dancing is the order, and bare feet keep time to the twang of the guitar. We occasionally caught sight of savages on the west bank of the river, and the captain informed me that he had once brought up a bag of beans to give them. The beans had been _poisoned_, in order that the miserable creatures might be _swept off the earth!_